


Travels

by Omoni



Category: Original Fiction - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 06:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11330427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omoni/pseuds/Omoni
Summary: A young woman learns how to master her ability to shift from time thread to time thread, with mixed results.





	Travels

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story in 2005, and I'm not that proud of it, especially the ending. However, I'm archiving it for the sake of archiving it, just in case someday I am able to salvage it into something sellable.

I go in and out of universes like water through going through a series of canals; I essentially stay the same and it all looks the same. However, if you pay close attention to the details, they differ, ever so slightly.

* * *

The first time I ever noticed such a thing was on my sixth birthday (although who knows how many times it happened without my noticing). The cake - right in front of my eyes - changed. It wasn't like a pop or a flash or anything like that. It was more like, at first it was a double chocolate layer cake, and then in the next blink it, it wasn't. It was an angelfood cream-filled pie-cake.  
  
Now, being six, I was weirded out by it, and right away I figured it was some kind of trick my parents were playing on me. So, naturally, I ignored it, until I was alone with my mother.  
  
"Cool trick, with the cakes," I said, grinning up at her. I wanted her to know that I hadn't fallen for it for one second.  
  
My mother looked down at me, puzzled. "What are you talking about, Sammy?"  
  
I giggled. "Come on, Mommy, the joke is all over. I didn't fall for it."  
  
"Sammy, honey, what joke?"  
  
"The one when you switched from the chocolate cake to the cream cake," I said, tilting my head, a habit of mine when I'm confused.  
  
"There was no chocolate cake," my mom answered me softly, looking at me with concern. I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it. Maybe _this_ was part of the joke, too?  
  
Instead, I shrugged my shoulders. "Sorry, I guess I was confused," I replied.  
  
She patted my head and I skipped away, as happy as a six-year-old could be on her birthday.  
  
I waited in the kitchen until I knew she had gone to clean up before I climbed onto the counters like I wasn't suppose to. I opened every cupboard, every drawer, every nook and cranny - including the dishwasher and even the garbage - but no matter how hard I looked, all I could find was angelfood, cream and pie evidence.  
  
It was then that I started to thinking perhaps something weird was going on, and it had nothing to do with regular birthday joking.

* * *

After that day, it seemed to happen without pattern, but definitely with notice.

For example; once when I was nine, I was playing with some marbles at the nearby park. One was purple and two were green. Then, one was green and two were purple.  
  
The changes were never that big when I was growing up. People were the same, I was the same. It was just the details that changed. Because of these ever changing details, I became so tuned into it all that I even found I had a knack for it. Thus, it was hardly a surprise that I became a photographer.  
  
My childhood was essentially normal, like I said. None of these fluxes messed me up, although sometimes I blamed my problems on them. It was just easier to find a scapegoat, and besides, I never shifted when I wanted to, when it mattered, so blaming it was easy.  
  
I also never went through time. It was always present tense, always. Never in the past - as much as I'd like - and never in the future - no matter how curious I can be.  
  
Scientists always like to yap about time. I can honestly say that anything they say goes over my head, and I couldn't care less either way. However, one thing is for certain; each decision you make has a consequence, and every move you make has an opposite reaction. Because there are infinite numbers of decisions and movements, there are infinite numbers of equivalent but different universes.  
  
Obviously, in one line or thread, my parents made chocolate cake. In another, they made angelfood. Those facts weren't what was changing or shifting - I was. My present state of mind and being, for whatever reason, traipse from thread to thread without my control.  
  
How did I feel about this? I can honestly say that for the most part if was sort of like an adventure. I woke up every day during my childhood thinking, What will change today? What will be different today? Sometimes it was a burden, like I said, but because I am the type of person that finds change exciting, most of the time it was... fun.  
  
However, when I became an adult, thing became less minute and innocent. Things became, to be mild, unnerving.

* * *

The first time this happened was at a photo shoot of mine, some gig that was beneath my skill but was good for money. It was some brainless, demented, over-done little stint, and I was getting bored fast trying to motivate the model. I swear, this model was stuffed with dust but not as fun.  
  
"Look," I snapped, starting to feel drugged from the bright colours and lack of intelligence. "I need you to pretend you're floating, but convincingly. This is supposed to be under water, so you need to act like it."  
  
The blonde gave me an absolutely scathing look before stiffly pantomiming floating in the water. She looked as if she was trying to shake piranhas off her small emaciated rear.  
  
I gritted my teeth and involuntarily my hands tightened around the tripod. Struggling to compose myself, I snapped, "You're not even trying. You're not even thinking. If you're going to be unprofessional, then get out of my studio and quit wasting my time."  
  
Speech done, I looked into the lens of the camera and look a breath to make a command, but the breath caught in my throat and made me cough.  
  
The blonde had brown hair.  
  
My head jerked up and I stared at her, feeling the blood rush to my face. I recognised her instantly as one of the two models I had trouble deciding on for the shoot - the other being the blonde.  
  
This had never happened before, in all of my life shifting. Never had a living thing switched before. The _name_ of living things, sure, but not actual one-person-for-another switching.  
  
I tried very hard to stay as calm as I could. I hesitated, struggling to maintain my posture. I must have hesitated way too long, because soon I heard one of the makeup artists murmur, "Samantha, are you okay? Do we need to break?"  
  
_No, I'm not. Yes, we do._ "Yes, I'm fine. We don't need a break," I lied, my body flushed and sweating. I nodded slowly, mechanically, and resumed the shoot, but my heart wasn't in it.  
  
All week I wondered about it. Did I make it happen? Did I finally manage to control my shifts and go somewhere far better than I had been? For all of my life I had always wanted to control my shifts, to see if, by making one choice, the other had either gone good or bad. But there was never control - ever - until that one photo shoot.  
  
All week I was nervous about shifting, but it turned out to be fruitless. The only shifts that even happened were minor. Life seemed to be as normal as possible for me again.

* * *

For months, my time went by like it always did - random and never dull. The next time it happened, the very idea of control had left my thoughts completely.  
  
But happen again it did. It wasn't as drastic as the model switch, nor did it affect anything living, but it was still very unnerving and very weird.  
  
It was just after a particularly fruitless meeting with a few of my production staff, and I really needed a dose of caffeine. I went to the nearest coffee shop, one that - unfortunately for my simple pallet - specialised in fancy coffees. I decided that for once it might be worth it just to try it, just once, just to see what everyone obsessed over, and headed inside.  
  
The menu read like a foreign language, so I randomly picked a name that sounded the simplest. After surly moments with underpaid staff, I had my odd coffee. I sat down, took a sip, and...  
  
...was utterly revolted.  
  
I choked and felt my body fill with horror and disgust at this poison masked as a hot beverage. Sourly, as I stood up to throw it away, I muttered to myself, "I should have just ordered a tea," since it had been the only normal thing on the menu.  
  
And that's when it happened. In my hand, I noticed a change in temperature, from fashionably tepid to steaming hot. I froze, sipped the drink, and realised that in my hands I had tea and not coffee-poison.  
  
It was that chilling moment that I realised that now, at twenty-seven, after all of my years of yearning, I could finally control my shifting.

* * *

The question was now that I could, what could I do with it? I wasn't foolish enough to think that I could control my own timeline and change the past to alter the future; I knew that even my new control still had its limitations.  
  
However, in my opinion, it had now opened up many doors for me that had been locked. I realised that now if I discovered the choices I had made were wrong, I could change them with a thought before it was too late, using the opposite but equal choice with an angry thought. How I had known it was anger that was the trigger was simple - in both situations, I had been furious when they had happened and wished for the choice I hadn't - but could have - made.  
  
Looking back now, where I am now, I realise that perhaps I should have wondered why it was anger that triggered the changes. But I didn't, and it would inevitably catch up with me in the end.

The trick was to make certain that my anger was real and genuine. If, when attempting to shift threads, my mood was only annoyed, nothing would come of it (which was why the attempts I tried later would always fail; I had been in a good mood).  
  
Luckily, I was a short-tempered woman, so it was easy for me to control such emotions and get angry real fast in order to trigger a shift.  
  
For a few months, everything was sort of like a bad supernatural novel; all I had to go was glare my eyes and feel that rage and things would change for the better. My life was actually progressing quite nicely this way, and for once my little scapegoat was giving me milk and cheese.  
  
Don't get me wrong, here. It's not like I altered lives and changed things drastically. It was more like... I knew that I had two or more options for each decision I made, so the trick was to pick one but remember the other. If the first one failed, I fell back to the other with a thought. The only person that was affected by all of this was me.  
  
At least, until I met Jason.

* * *

Jason was a man I met one day when I went out to shop for more film. He was the clerk at he store, and instantly we clicked. He may have not been a professional, but he knew his stuff and had a passion that equalled - if not rivalled - my own for photography. I soon found myself in the store more and more after that, for things I didn't even need. Each time I made sure he was the one there, and each time he made sure he was the one to help me out.  
  
Soon, after I had come in and bought a two-hundred-dollar travel tote for my camera, I finally got the courage to ask him to coffee.  
  
To my surprise, however, he declined.  
  
In my shame, I became hurt and angry. Had I misread his signals? Had I misunderstood the obvious sparks we had had around each other?  
  
And then the answer just came to me: shift and jump to the thread that you said nothing!  
  
I concentrated on my hurt and humiliation (which wasn't that hard, considering) and used it to hurl my consciousness into another thread, the one that included my silence but also involved a flirty smile.  
  
I smiled that smile, turned to walk away with a heavy new bag and an empty purse, and was stopped by Jason's voice calling me back. I turned and headed back to the desk, careful to keep my expression bemused.  
  
"Samantha," he asked softly, his eyes flicking over to his manager as he spoke. "Would you like to go to dinner? My treat."  
  
Ah. So _that_ was what had been wrong! He had wanted to be the one to initiate! Old fashioned, I had to admit, and sort of snooty of him - that other him - to turn me down for asking first; however, I could hardly fault him here for what he had done there, could I?  
  
"Sure," I said, smiling again. "I would love to."  
  
He grinned, wrote down his number, then took mine, promising to call me that night when he got off work.  
  
I went home and spent some time by myself, mostly playing with my new equipment and trying to balance the loss of money with the gain of the incoming date. Time passed, and before I knew it, the night was almost over, and no call had come.  
  
_That's odd,_ I thought, reaching into my pocket and pulling out Jason's card. I pulled over my phone and decided to dial the number.  
  
The phone rang a few times before he picked up. "Yeah?" he grumbled.  
  
"Um, Jason? It's Samantha."  
  
A brief silence met these words, only to be broken with, "Are you kidding me?"  
  
I was taken aback. "I'm sorry?" I said, trying to sound polite but unable to suppress a bite of annoyance.  
  
"I _told_ you I would call you. Why didn't you wait?"  
  
_Because you wouldn't call when you were obviously home._ "I, uh, just thought to see if you had--"  
  
"What, are you getting clingy already?"  
  
Annoyance flashed into anger before I could control it. "No," I snapped, "but perhaps instead of living in the Stone Age, you would learn to either call someone when you say you will or--"  
  
_Click._  
  
"--grow up," I mumbled before slamming down the phone so hard it rattled.  
  
Okay, so obviously Jason was the type that had A/ lots of baggage and B/ dominance issues. Obviously he wasn't the best person to get into a relationship with, so one part of me - a huge part - wanted to give it up right then and there.  
  
But another part of me, the nagging part, still wondered whether or not Jason could be different. After all, he had been so full of passion and so much fun - compatible, even - before in the store...  
  
I know what you are thinking and yes, it was stupid and naive. Obviously, if a man is the same in both timelines, it was unlikely that he would be any different in a third. But my life has never been the normal type, and because of this, I'm more inclined to believe the least probably of all of the likely outcomes.  
  
So, I shifted again, to the thread in which I had never called him.  
  
When he didn't call me that night, it was hard to be surprised, although it did hurt despite knowing it would happen. However, I decided it would be pointless to lose sleep over it, so I went to bed and that was that.  
  
So, you can imagine my surprise when my phone rang early in the morning, so early that I cursed before uttering a greeting.  
  
"Ugh - shit - hello?"  
  
"Samantha?" the voice on the other line said. It was Jason, and he sounded hurried and upset.  
  
"Uh huh?" I replied fuzzily, still trying to get myself awake.  
  
"I'm sorry, I had no idea what time it was when I remembered to call you last night, and by the time I did, it was way too late to call."  
  
Huh. This was new. "S'alright," I muttered, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.  
  
"No, I'm sorry. I said I would call and I didn't. That's why I'm calling so early; I couldn't wait."  
  
Flattering. Surely Jason was a charmer. Dangerous, but somewhat intriguing. "Really, it's fine," I answered.  
  
"No, please, let me make it up to you."  
  
So I did. He took me out to a nice restaurant that night, and we talked for hours long after the last of our food was digesting. Eventually we left, and I felt this bubble of satisfaction deep in my insides, like all of my grief had paid off.  
  
He took me home, and we kissed, like two movie stars waiting for their close up. It was like fire and electricity moving inside of my body, and I couldn't help but become slightly drunk off of it.  
  
He then bade me goodnight and went home, and I went into my house feeling good and happy.  
  
In the morning, things changed.

* * *

I woke up, instead, to a hang-over. Confused, I opened my eyes to blurry disarray; everything around me was a myriad of bottles and discarded clothes.  
  
It was then that I noticed that I wasn't alone in my bed.  
  
I turned, and there was Jason, naked and reeking of alcohol. I felt a cold shock. I didn't even remember anything that had brought us to this. Could it of happened last night? Had I been so out of it?  
  
Common sense reminded me that, indeed, this wasn't the case. In my memory, I had gone to bed, read for a while, then fell asleep alone. There was nothing in between then and now.  
  
_I must have shifted again,_ I thought numbly. _Without control._  
  
But what kind of shift was this? _Everything_ was different, especially since I was hardly the drinking type! And yet, there I was, with a hangover and a mouth that tasted like hay and a naked man in my bed. What the hell had happened?  
  
In sudden trapped panic, I staggered to my feet and concentrated, wobbling on the spot. I focused on my confusion and turned it into anger - fury, even - at suddenly losing control of my power. It wasn't fair; I really liked Jason and I couldn't even remember having sex with him. I wanted to know the feel of his lips, the taste of his skin, the feel of his cock inside of me, but apparently time had its own ideas.  
  
However, I wasn't about to let myself lose this new control.  
  
Slowly but surely, the scene around me changed, and I was able to escape this bittersweet kind of hell given to me. Now I was back in my own room, my real room, and things were as they should be.  
  
In accordance to _me_.  
  
However, as things went on, it got much, much worse.  
  
It was as if karma had finally caught up with me and my pussyfooting with time, and now I finally had to pay the price.

* * *

The threads shifted so often and my control never seemed to correct it. They slipped though my fingers. I was caught blurting out things that in any other thread would have made sense but had no relevance to the one I was in.  
  
I was yanked between threads with Jason in all of his glory, from all sides - possessive, abusive, callous; loving, gentle, thoughtful - but all of it was mashed together and I couldn't figure out what was real and what wasn't.  
  
Once, he said to me, "Every day, you seem like a different person."  
  
It stuck to me. It confused me. It hurled me into this world of confusion and doubt and lack of understanding. How could it be _me_ that changed when it was actually _everything else_? How could it be _me_ that was different when I was the only constant?  
  
That nagging part of me, the one that had led me into changing threads for Jason, suddenly seemed far more urgent. It was like a constant agony, a constant heartburn inside of my stomach, and I couldn't shake it.  
  
It constantly told me to change and jump and shift to the next thread, to the next choice, and pretty soon, I realised, it started to do it all on its own. I had lost control.  
  
That was, until it dawned on me that I had never had it.  
  
Everything I told you here is true. All the things that happened to me, that I had seen and done, is true.  
  
I still see it all as different worlds.  
  
I always will.  
  
But Jason was also right in what he said.  
  
To change the world around me, I change myself. I changed what I saw before I saw it, so I could "change" it into reality and convince myself I had done it for the better.  
  
I now have control over it again, mostly. I see what I want to see, and accept what I have to see. The therapy and medication are good for that.  
  
But sometimes, when I am alone, I close my eyes and see the threads of the universes I have touched - and have yet to touch.

**\--THE END--**


End file.
